How to answer “Why our school?”

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While I obviously intend to only apply to schools with programs I would enjoy (that’s the ideal, at least...) my primary way for constructing my school list is (in this order of importance):

1) Stats match
2) Good elementary schools for my daughter and good COL
3) Availability of employment for my spouse in her field
4) Match to mission statement

As far as it will come to answering ‘Why this school’ should I focus mostly on #4? Should I talk about the others?
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you can talk about the area the school is in and your ties there. Mostly I talk about the specific things that make that school a good fit for me and me for them - so that may include things like curriculum - I prefer a 18 mo curriculum so I can have more elective time - I want a curriculum that is really patient and team based - not lectures - I want a school that will help me be a great clinician and doesn't just churn out researchers. some schools are connected with hospitals that are particularly good at something - some patient populations may be more ideal for you - maybe you really want to work with underserved people or refugees or you want to improve your medical spanish - maybe you want to pursue health policy and the school is in dc and has a great health policy program - dig a little deeper than the mission statement

so yes you want to address #4 but go beyond that with examples of their programs and curriculum (their programs are a demonstration of their mission statement)
 
samualjhatfield said:
While I obviously intend to only apply to schools with programs I would enjoy (that’s the ideal, at least...) my primary way for constructing my school list is (in this order of importance):

1) Stats match
2) Good elementary schools for my daughter and good COL
3) Availability of employment for my spouse in her field
4) Match to mission statement

As far as it will come to answering ‘Why this school’ should I focus mostly on #4? Should I talk about the others?
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Mentioning 2-3 is good, but you need to be specific about things the school has that are a good fit for your goals and preferences. The curriculum, opportunities for rural medicine, early clinical exposure, whatever. Find a couple things that really pump you up about the place.
 
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Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Mentioning 2-3 is good, but you need to be specific about things the school has that are a good fit for your goals and preferences. The curriculum, opportunities for rural medicine, early clinical exposure, whatever. Find a couple things that really pump you up about the place.
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Gotcha. So choosing my school list based on these things is ok, but in interview/secondary’s really emphasize the school. Sounds good.
 
samualjhatfield said:
Gotcha. So choosing my school list based on these things is ok, but in interview/secondary’s really emphasize the school. Sounds good.
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Schools want to make sure it’s a good fit. So they want to see what about you and what about the school match. If you can give specific answers to that, it looks good. But you can also mention that your spouse would be happy and able to get a job. That shows you’re not just thinking about yourself and that you’ve already discussed it with your spouse and have decided it’ll work.
 
samualjhatfield said:
Gotcha. So choosing my school list based on these things is ok, but in interview/secondary’s really emphasize the school. Sounds good.
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Your family should play a role in which schools you pick but you need more specifics when explaining why that school because there is likely more than one place that your child could go to a good school and your SO could get a job. So those things can help you narrow your geography but it doesn't make sense to go to a school and not have strong details about the school that you are drawn to as well.
 
You are going to consider #1-#3 when you make your list of schools to which to apply. This is very important. You don't want to apply to schools where your stats are not a good fit (I saw a lot of resource protection this year - so whether stats are on high side or low side, stats fit is important). And your family considerations will enter in here too. If I have an advisee who has never been in the midwest, and has no friends/family/support system in midwest, and no great desire to experience life there, we may eliminate most schools there in favor of rather equivalent schools in areas that are appealing. All this goes on behind the scenes, early in the process.

THEN, you will write your essays about #4 and curriculum style and unique opportunities which might exist at the school that might be important to you, such as an advanced simulation curriculum, research mentor availability, and clinical training environment. It will not be particularly compelling to tell Quinnipiac/Netter (not my school - just picked it out of the blue!) that you are applying there because there are lots of jobs for your wife near Hamden, CT and the public schools are good and the cost of living is good (all likely true BTW). The issue is that there will be a lot of med schools that will fit this bill and no school will feel like they are all that unique in these respects. Obviously, in the casual part of an interview, you can certainly mention these considerations. However, when I ask "WHY our school?" in interviews, I mostly want to hear the applicant show that they have researched my school and that they know what might make our school a particularly good fit academically. I am happy to hear about whether they have family in the area, have a support system in the area, and/or opportunities for a partner, but that should not be the primary focus.
 
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Talk about a few things about the medical school that either (1) ties you to the region the school serves (e.g., you have family near the medical school), (2) things that would benefit your career path as a physician (e.g., early clinical exposure, significant research the school of medicine is doing), and (3) describes how your experiences fit with the school's mission and vision (e.g., research schools love to see prior research that you've did)
 
It is a bit trickier when there are several schools in close proximity... there are three med schools within commuting distance of Hamden so it really comes down to what that school offers that makes it a good fit for you in terms of teaching style and curriculum, required clerkships/research, electives, facilities.
 
LizzyM said:
It is a bit trickier when there are several schools in close proximity... there are three med schools within commuting distance of Hamden so it really comes down to what that school offers that makes it a good fit for you in terms of teaching style and curriculum, required clerkships/research, electives, facilities.
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Thank you all for your feedback. As far as this goes, I constantly forget how packed full of medical schools the rest of the country is. I only have 3 MD schools within a 600 mile radius. Going through my list, I associate a school with a city - I forget that about half of my school list has 2 or more schools just in that city.

Cool then, 1-3 on my list for picking list initially, number 4 for narrowing down/truly researching the school itself.
 
Just wanted to say this was a very helpful thread.
I'd been sitting on a secondary question that was basically "Why this school?" for weeks and after reading this thread, I typed that baby up in a few hours.

So thanks!
 
HopefulMDNP said:
Just wanted to say this was a very helpful thread.
I'd been sitting on a secondary question that was basically "Why this school?" for weeks and after reading this thread, I typed that baby up in a few hours.

So thanks!
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You’re submitting a secondary in March?
 
Reword the schools mission statement and add some personal baloney about doctors today, location, helping people, innovation etc. BOOM
 
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Dagrimsta1 said:
Reword the schools mission statement and add some personal baloney about doctors today, location, helping people, innovation etc. BOOM
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This is pretty hokey. Too bad we see see it so often.
 
HopefulMDNP said:
PS mostly done...
MCAT done... Considering a retake though.
Not sure what W/A is...
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Yeah definitely prioritize PS and work and activities. I prewrote all my secondaries and all but one of the schools changed up their questions, so I had to write them from scratch anyway. They don’t take a ton of brainpower to write.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Yeah definitely prioritize PS and work and activities. I prewrote all my secondaries and all but one of the schools changed up their questions, so I had to write them from scratch anyway. They don’t take a ton of brainpower to write.
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I partially agree but definitely there's some themes that stay consistent - like how will you add diversity to the class/what makes you unique - this question in particularly can be useful to start thinking about so that your personal statement and your diversity essay make sense together/complement each other
 
lalalallala said:
I partially agree but definitely there's some themes that stay consistent - like how will you add diversity to the class/what makes you unique - this question in particularly can be useful to start thinking about so that your personal statement and your diversity essay make sense together/complement each other
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I didn't say don't think about them or even don't prewrite. I just said prioritize PS and work/activities since you know those won't change, but your secondaries might.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Yeah definitely prioritize PS and work and activities. I prewrote all my secondaries and all but one of the schools changed up their questions, so I had to write them from scratch anyway. They don’t take a ton of brainpower to write.
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Hmmm, the work and activities, that's on the actual AMCAS form/application system... Or is this something else?
Didn't know it was something to prewrite... Will check out some youtube videos for what it looks like.
 
HopefulMDNP said:
Hmmm, the work and activities, that's on the actual AMCAS form/application system... Or is this something else?
Didn't know it was something to prewrite... Will check out some youtube videos for what it looks like.
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How you write about and describe your different experiences is as meaningful as your personal statement. The issue that most students run into this they think of the work activity section is just listing off “this is what I did” as opposed to what it really should be as “This is how what I did comtributes towards my pursuit of medicine and what I learned from it.”

If you are able to, I personally think the PS is best for “Why medicine?” and the Work/Activities section is best for “Why me?”

Yes, it is part of the AMCAS application and is about 2X-4X the length of your PS depending on how many activities you have.
 
HopefulMDNP said:
Hmmm, the work and activities, that's on the actual AMCAS form/application system... Or is this something else?
Didn't know it was something to prewrite... Will check out some youtube videos for what it looks like.
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It's on AMCAS. You can easily find how many characters you have to work with and pre-write your experience descriptions. You should take it as seriously as your PS. The only major difference besides the length is that not every experience needs to (or should) be related back to medicine.
 
Dagrimsta1 said:
Hokey response for a hokey question
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I didn't feel my question was hokey. I genuinely have not looked at the school fit at most places and have just looked at the areas and stats to generate my list. Even with 'dream schools' that changes very often. 2 years ago, I thought I was going to do ROTC --> HPSP/ushus --> EM ----> Wilderness Medicine Fellowship. Now I want to do physiatry at UW in Seattle...
 
samualjhatfield said:
While I obviously intend to only apply to schools with programs I would enjoy (that’s the ideal, at least...) my primary way for constructing my school list is (in this order of importance):

1) Stats match
2) Good elementary schools for my daughter and good COL
3) Availability of employment for my spouse in her field
4) Match to mission statement

As far as it will come to answering ‘Why this school’ should I focus mostly on #4? Should I talk about the others?
Click to expand...
There are other things to add that shows you've done your homework about the schools
Curriculum
Affiliated hospitals
Research opportunities
That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure that you could think of more if you simply prowl around the school's websites (which most pre-meds can't lift a finger to do, despite having hundreds, if not even thousands of hours of research experience).

To tell the truth, any fool can say that they match the school's mission.
 
Goro said:
There are other things to add that shows you've done your homework about the schools
Curriculum
Affiliated hospitals
Research opportunities
That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure that you could think of more if you simply prowl around the school's websites (which most pre-meds can't lift a finger to do, despite having hundreds, if not even thousands of hours of research experience).

To tell the truth, any fool can say that they match the school's mission.
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Welcome back. 🙂
 
Goro said:
There are other things to add that shows you've done your homework about the schools
Curriculum
Affiliated hospitals
Research opportunities
That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure that you could think of more if you simply prowl around the school's websites (which most pre-meds can't lift a finger to do, despite having hundreds, if not even thousands of hours of research experience).

To tell the truth, any fool can say that they match the school's mission.
Click to expand...
I am DEFINITELY going to be extensively looking at the school’s websites, thank you and welcome back! I guess my 4th bullet should’ve read “match to school” to encompass the mission statement/pathways/curriculum etc. Righteous, so those sorts of things should be the focus of my secondary’s (if asked) and interviews (if asked).

I wholly intend on sifting through each school’s website for several weeks prior if I get an interview there.

Same with school list - waiting until after I get MCAT score back in May to narrow the school list down any further than Stats and region (no point in researching schools I may not even have a shot at)
 
Goro said:
There are other things to add that shows you've done your homework about the schools
Curriculum
Affiliated hospitals
Research opportunities
That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure that you could think of more if you simply prowl around the school's websites (which most pre-meds can't lift a finger to do, despite having hundreds, if not even thousands of hours of research experience).

To tell the truth, any fool can say that they match the school's mission.
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Came across my first two secondaris with a "Why Us" question...surprisingly wrote 8 before I got to any of these. Side note, Stanford's curriculum is dope and UVAs website is not very user friendly...
 
Goro said:
which most pre-meds can't lift a finger to do
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To add to this, literally UVA has a page about "Why us" with links to three youtube videos that each have less than a thousand views on them....Like....These answer the secondary for me...
 
MemeLord said:
To add to this, literally UVA has a page about "Why us" with links to three youtube videos that each have less than a thousand views on them....Like....These answer the secondary for me...
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Those must be new... when I was prewriting that one I had to come up with it all myself. Lol
 
MemeLord said:
To add to this, literally UVA has a page about "Why us" with links to three youtube videos that each have less than a thousand views on them....Like....These answer the secondary for me...
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and yet I guarantee that at least 1/3 to 1/2 of the students who apply won't even watch them
 
At least it's much easier to answer this than some random company at a career fair. For a lot of us, being a doctor was something we dreamed about even as little children. Looking up the school's mission statement, rotation sites, volunteer opportunities, curriculum, etc and how that can help you achieve said goal is many times easier than saying why you want to work for some random company that manufactures tools for tool manufacturing.
 
When a school asks "why us" and the prompt asks for any connections to the state, should I explicitly write "I have no connections to XXXXX" or should I just focus on the rest of the school? I want to acknowledge each part of the prompt...

Would that be a time to just be like "While I have no connections to _________, the surrounding area presents a vibrant combination of big-city amenities with small town charm. Along with great public schools for my daughter, dining, parks, hiking opportunities, year-round festivals....etc"

Potentially as the final paragraph after talking about the curriculum, facilities, blibbity blabbity?
 
MemeLord said:
When a school asks "why us" and the prompt asks for any connections to the state, should I explicitly write "I have no connections to XXXXX" or should I just focus on the rest of the school? I want to acknowledge each part of the prompt...

Would that be a time to just be like "While I have no connections to _________, the surrounding area presents a vibrant combination of big-city amenities with small town charm. Along with great public schools for my daughter, dining, parks, hiking opportunities, year-round festivals....etc"

Potentially as the final paragraph after talking about the curriculum, facilities, blibbity blabbity?
Click to expand...

Don't waste space by saying you don't have connections. It's implied that you don't have any if you don't mention them.
 
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